Friday, April 13, 2007

Middle Tennessee company JL Kirk Associates has gained the dubious distinction of being listed among the top searches on the Technorati data site, which says it tracks and indexes over 75.2 million blogs. Others in the current top ten of Technorati searches are Don Imus and the Duke lacrosse controversy.

Appearing on the list is not in itself dubious. Author Kurt Vonnegut is on the list because of his passing and his fame. But the way the JL Kirk made the list was to have its King & Ballow lawyers threaten a Nashville blogger with legal action if she did not remove her personal opinions about JL Kirk's first-hand treatment of her from her own personal blog.

Once Kirk / King & Ballow resorted to intimidation, the issue went viral and spread across Tennessee and then across the nation as writers blog-by-blog passed on the news of the chilling affect that the headhunter and its lawyers tried to have on constitutional rights of free expression.

So welcome to the top Technorati ten, JL Kirk Associates. You didn't get there because you are an honorable or successful business. You got there by being scoundrels. You got there when your lawyer at King & Ballow sent an ill-advised letter that virtually united the fractious blogosphere into one public relations nightmare for you that will live on for a long time, if not forever.

Oh, and a local Nashville TV news station (also represented hypocritically paradoxically by King & Ballow) broadcast this unfortunate saga to an even larger audience this evening. If you did not see it here it is: